Top Three Reasons a Marketing Strategy Fails

It is a little defeating when you put a lot of time and energy into planning and executing your marketing plan, but you end up discovering that it made no difference to your bottom line. It makes you want to give up entirely on this useless and time-sucking process, even though every publication keeps telling you it is a silver bullet. Well guess what? Many other companies go through this process too.

According to SBI Research, around 71 percent of marketers are going to experience a failure to get to their revenue targets, because they are using the wrong marketing strategies. You read it correctly – you are in the majority! So let us forget about all our grievances about marketing and focus on what went wrong.

1- You Had a Non-Existent Strategy: Sometimes you went with the flow and took things as they come. Who does not do that? Every marketer who has the intention of building their business. Depending on the tactics of your strategy, going in without a concrete plan is the biggest mistake. If you are “going with the flow” every time, you are going to end up nowhere.

Solution: Have a clear strategy and plan of action that you can keep for the coming weeks and months. You do not need a 50-page long strategy booklet. You only need some clear points about the direction you want to take with your marketing process regarding how to capture leads, email frequency, social media strategy, videos, etc.

2- You Copied: It is very important to do research into what your competitors are doing with their marketing strategy, but you cannot simply copy what others find successful. You have to ensure your business is a little different from the rest. It is a problem when your target audience has no idea how you are different from the competition, because it means you only have one competitive option left: a lower price.

Solution: Figure out why your company is unique and emphasize this uniqueness. Do you have a personalized way of treating customers? Are you offering a great service to them? Do you have some interesting story about how your company came about?

3- The Target Was Off: Did you complete research into who needs what you are trying to sell? Are the people you target the ones who really want your products? Are you targeting them at all? Before getting angry at your strategy, think about your client profile a little bit more.

Solution: Is it time to identify your target customers. Get to know them very well. What are their values and struggles? How do they spend their days? What do they want from your company? This will ensure you can not only get their attention, but that you will target them in the right ways.